Adele’s 21 will sometime today become only the eighth album in history to achieve 4 million UK sales and now looks like heading back to number one for a 21st week.

Boosted by the XL artist’s Brits performance of Rolling In The Deep and her winning best album and best British female, 21’s sales are 14.3% up on the week and by the end of business on Thursday the album was only about 600 sales short of leading this week’s artist albums market, according to the Official Charts Company.

With its cumulative UK sales by midnight on Thursday just around 3,000 short of 4 million, the album was just behind Brits Critics’ Choice winner Emeli Sande’s Virgin’s debut Our Version of Events. Sande’s album debuted at number one last Sunday and has been the biggest seller all this week, but 21 is very likely to have overtaken it by the time the final chart is published this weekend.